1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a plasma display and a method of driving the plasma display.
2. Description of the Related Art
A plasma display is a flat panel display that uses plasma generated by gas discharge to display characters or images. It includes, depending on its size, more than several scores to millions of pixels arranged in a matrix pattern.
One frame of the plasma display is divided into a plurality of subfields, and each subfield has a reset period, an address period, and a sustain period. The reset period is for initializing the status of each discharge cell so as to facilitate an addressing operation on the discharge cell. The address period is for selecting turn-on/turn-off cells (i.e., cells to be turned on or off) and accumulating wall charges to the turn-on cells (i.e., addressed cells).
In the sustain period, a sustain pulse is alternately applied to pairs of scan electrodes and sustain electrodes. When the wall charges are formed between the scan electrode and the sustain electrode by the address discharge in the address period, an image is displayed since a sustain discharge is generated between the scan electrode and the sustain electrode by the sustain pulse and wall charges.
Since the plasma display uses a high level voltage for firing a discharge, power consumption is increased when a screen load ratio is great (i.e., when a lot of discharge cells are turned on). Accordingly, a control method for controlling the power consumption is used in the plasma display such that the power consumption is not increased over a predetermined value. Such is conventionally accomplished by controlling the number of the sustain pulses according to a screen load ratio for one frame. Such a power consumption control method is for controlling the power consumption according to the screen load ratio for one frame regardless of discharge efficiency.